The developers of the Linux Mint distribution intend to rework the update installation manager in the next release to force the distribution to be kept up to date. The conducted research showed that only about 30% of users install updates in a timely manner, less than a week after their publication.
Telemetry is not collected in Linux Mint, so an indirect method was used to assess the relevance of the distribution’s components based on the analysis of the Firefox versions used. The Linux Mint developers worked with Yahoo to analyze which version of the browser Linux Mint users are using. After the release of the package with the Firefox 85.0 update, the dynamics of the transition of Linux Mint users to the new version of Firefox was calculated based on the value of the User Agent header transmitted when accessing Yahoo services. The result was disappointing and in a week only 30% of users switched to the new version, while the rest continued to go online from outdated releases.
Moreover, it turned out that some users do not install updates at all and continue to use Firefox 77, proposed in the Linux Mint 20 release. It was also revealed that 5% of users (according to other statistics, 30%) continue to use the Linux Mint 17.x branch , support for which ended in April 2019, i.e. updates on these systems have not been installed for two years. 5% is based on an estimate of requests from the browser start page, and 30% is based on requests from the APT package manager to repositories.
From the comments of users who do not update their systems, it can be understood that the main reasons for using old versions are ignorance of the availability of updates, installation on outdated hardware that does not have enough resources to run new versions of the distribution kit, unwillingness to change the familiar environment, the appearance of regressive changes in new branches, such as problems with video drivers, and discontinued support for 32-bit systems.
The Linux Mint developers considered two main ways of pushing updates more proactively: enhancing user awareness of updates, and automatically installing updates by default with the ability to easily revert to manual mode for those who are accustomed to self-control of their system.
In the next release of Linux Mint, it is decided to add additional metrics to the update manager to assess the relevance of packages on the system, such as the number of days since the last update was applied. In the event of a long absence of updates, Update Manager will start displaying reminders to apply the accumulated updates or switch to a new distribution branch. In this case, warnings can be disabled in the settings. Linux Mint continues to adhere to the principle that hard imposition is unacceptable, as the user owns the computer and is free to do whatever with it. It is not planned to switch to automatic installation of updates yet.